whole chicken in the slow cooker

naomijj

Thanks Norman Bean :-) Glad to hear that it should work! I like the advice about no seconds, I guess the trick is to hide the leftovers before I sit down to eat so theres nothing in evidence lol :-)

Trinny

Hi there

My slow cooker is in the post as i type - cant wait!:D

We do

Roast on a Sunday
Stirfry on a Monday
Curry on a Wednesday
Pie on a Thursday

(the pie idea works great when you have very little meat left, as you can add other things to the pie to pad it out)

The Complete slow cooker collection in the mega index is a good place to look for other OS slow cooker ideas

Welcome

Trin

zippychick

Hi Naomijj:hello:

Welcome to OS - you should stay around and post more

I found the thread about cooking a whole chicken in the slow cooker. Your plan sounds more than reasonable, and the more you do it, the better you will get

It's perfectly ok to cook it overnight , and wake up to the smell of yummy chicken!:j

As trin mentioned - Complete slow cooker collection

Strangely I've never cooked a whole chicken in the SC myself but i do know from reading on here, that it tends to fall off the bone, so you could consider some sort of lifty outy thing like a lining of tinfoil. (Yes, that's a technical term:rotfl:)

I would just see how much you can get out of it and mentally divide it up per dish IYKWIM? It may go further than you think. Don't forget to bulk out with veg, and for your fried rice, maybe chop the chicken up quite small. I always find HM fried rice so tasty and yum as it is, i never feel the need for a lot of meat in it

Are you ok with how to do stock? AGain super easy with the SC - let us know if you need help with that.

I'll add your thread to the one about cooking a whole chicken later

thanks
Zip

naomijj

Hi Trinny :-) Thanks for replying :-) that list sounds great, exactly what I was hoping for. I do love my slow cooker but I want to use it more and make it more versatile.

Hello Zippychick :-) Thankyou for finding that for me - I have noticed you are the master of finding threads for people :-) :-) That is the thread I remembered reading so will go and have a look. I have been brave and chucked it in with some celery and carrot and half an inch of water on high for the first couple of hours then will go on auto over night. Hopefully when I go to it in the morning it will be all falling to bits (although I didn't think of a lifty out thing so will have to literally fish it out! lol)
I think you are right, I will make piles of the different types of meat and see how I can go.
I have never made stock ( the shame) and will most likely be back!
I will try my best to stick around and let you know how I get on with the OS experiments! I am picking my Grans brain for tips, shes in her 80's and her tales from her younger life fascinate me :-)
Thanks again to everyone both for the help and the warm welcome :-)

WeaselPop

Hey Naomi. I haven't read through the thread that Trinny has helpfully posted but I cook whole chickens in my slow cooker all the time and they are great! I always take the skin off the chicken first and put my potatoes and veg in the bottom of the pot then add a bit of chicken stock to cover the veg and put the chicken on the top, the stock doesn't need to cover the chicken.

I put the chicken on upside down and find that is is cooked after 3-4 hours. I take the chicken out with tongs and set aside, lift out the veg with a slotted spoon and then use some of the juice to make gravy.

As it has been cooked in the slow cooker the meat pretty much just falls off the bone and so you get to use more of the meat rather than I used to when I cooked it in the oven.

I usually set aside some of leftover meat in a stir fry and then put the carcass and scraps back in the slow cooker with the leftover stock to make chicken soup.

HTH and good luck!!

lizziebabe

Hi naomijj,
I roasted my chicken last weekend. From this I had 4 meals, and then made stock from the carcass. I put the carcass in a deep pan with water and an onion and left it to boil for about an hour. Then I removed the carcass, stripped off the last bits of meat,kept the meat aside, then added celery, leeks, carrots and sweet potato to the stock to make soup. When the veggies were cooked the soup was ready. I kept the chicken separately and put it into the soup each time I heated it up. I had 3 large bowls of yummy soup. So, definitely a 'rubber' chicken. I am on my own part time, as DS is at Uni. Also get visited by DD.

Don't forget to let the chicken cool down properly before you refrigerate it and if you don't want to eat chicken all week you can freeze the cooked chicken even if it was frozen before you cooked it. Similarly you can also freeze the stock for soup later.

Have fun

zippychick

Naomiijj - oh thanks!:o:j:D

Stock is easy peasy. Personally i roast the bones in the oven for about half an hour (once the chicken is picked off) . I can put these in the fridge to make into stock later, as i would make sure i didnt just put the oven on for the bones If that makes sense.

Then i chuck it all in the slow cooker (after eating too much crispy skin:o ), throw loads of hot water in, an onion chopped in two, a couple of whole carrots, about 10 peppercorns, a bay leaf and some parsley if i have it - i usually have some frozen. I would usually cook it on high for around 4 -6 hours, but you could do on low for a very long time. You will notice the liquid goes quite a deep brown. Try to put less water in rather than more as you can always add more water. Sometimes i find i can drain most of the stock, fill it up and let it go again . I usually build up my carcasses and do two at a time or three - but just make a smaller amount with one.

What i do is roast the bones, then freeze them in my carcass box until i have enough bones. If i have chicken thighs in the mean time, those bones get roasted with something else in the oven, and chucked in the box until there is enough to make stock.:D:j Sadly my freezer died last week and i threw a whole box of bones out as i wasn't sure how safe they were as the thermostat in my fridge and freezer went !:mad:

When it is cooked, strain to remove the bones and voila. Freeze or refridgerate the stock and you will see it turns to jelly which is normal I freaked the first time:rotfl: Or, throw in your soup ingredients and use as you normally

More linkies

I've kept the carcass now what? - link in here for a good slide show Pink winged made here (this is how I learnt ) or

typed explanation of how Pink winged does it

Home made chicken stock

Best way to make stock??

Chicken stock to soup

How do i make my own chicken stock?

Right, don't want to overload you with links!

Zip

naomijj

Thanks Weasel Pop :-) I went ahead and cooked it overnight, we just had the breast meat for dinner with potatoes peas and carrots and it was yummy :-) I have a huge jug of stock now too cos I left the carcass in added more water and veg and left it all day :j
I think I will be doing this agin I can't believe how much more chicken I seemed to get from it :T

naomijj

Thanks Lizziebabe :-) like I said to weaselpop I am really chuffed with the results I have got and will be doing it again :-) looking forward to more yummy chicken tomorrow! :T

naomijj

zippychick wrote: »

Naomiijj - oh thanks!:o:j:D

Stock is easy peasy. Personally i roast the bones in the oven for about half an hour (once the chicken is picked off) . I can put these in the fridge to make into stock later, as i would make sure i didnt just put the oven on for the bones If that makes sense.

Then i chuck it all in the slow cooker (after eating too much crispy skin:o ), throw loads of hot water in, an onion chopped in two, a couple of whole carrots, about 10 peppercorns, a bay leaf and some parsley if i have it - i usually have some frozen. I would usually cook it on high for around 4 -6 hours, but you could do on low for a very long time. You will notice the liquid goes quite a deep brown. Try to put less water in rather than more as you can always add more water. Sometimes i find i can drain most of the stock, fill it up and let it go again . I usually build up my carcasses and do two at a time or three - but just make a smaller amount with one.

What i do is roast the bones, then freeze them in my carcass box until i have enough bones. If i have chicken thighs in the mean time, those bones get roasted with something else in the oven, and chucked in the box until there is enough to make stock.:D:j Sadly my freezer died last week and i threw a whole box of bones out as i wasn't sure how safe they were as the thermostat in my fridge and freezer went !:mad:

When it is cooked, strain to remove the bones and voila. Freeze or refridgerate the stock and you will see it turns to jelly which is normal I freaked the first time:rotfl: Or, throw in your soup ingredients and use as you normally

More linkies

I've kept the carcass now what? - link in here for a good slide show Pink winged made here (this is how I learnt ) or

typed explanation of how Pink winged does it

Home made chicken stock

Best way to make stock??

Chicken stock to soup

How do i make my own chicken stock?

Right, don't want to overload you with links!

Zip

Hey ZippyChick
I am so happy with the results I got :T I will be doing it again for sure. I took the chicken out this morning and put the bones and scraps back in, bunged in an onion and a bay leaf along with the celery and carrot I had done the chicken on top of and some more water and left it on all day while I was out. I have just strained it and I have some yummy smelling stock now :T Going to be reading the link about stock to soup next! Thanks so much for all of your help :beer: So far I love the OS things I have tried and I have a jumper on and my heating is OFF!:eek:
:rotfl: